This has to be
Barack Obama
’s “
John Howard
after Port Arthur" moment. No ifs, no buts, no craven refuge in the second amendment right “. . . to keep and bear arms . . ."

If ever America is going to break the spell of the dissembling gun lobby apologists, this evil crime – a massacre of 20 innocent children and their teachers and aides – is the occasion.

The President spoke emotionally and resolutely after Friday’s atrocity at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. He recounted the mass shootings that have taken place just in the past few months – in Oregon this week, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the cinema in suburban Colorado in July – and in recent years on countless street corners in big cities.

“Any of these neighbourhoods could be our own. So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this. Regardless of the politics," the President said, wiping away tears.

What’s different now? The President has spoken movingly and emotionally after previous shootings, most notably after the 2010 shooting of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, which left six dead. He has a long record of advocating gun controls, but not acting.

What’s different now is that he has political capital, and as he told former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in March, the “flexibility" as a second-term president with a convincing re-election behind him.

In the six weeks since the election, Obama has been using that political capital to drive a wedge into the Republican Party over tax rates for the top 2 per cent of households. That’s a sweet bonus for the Democratic base, but a waste of political capital when America faces a daunting list of budget, economic and foreign policy challenges.

Soak them as you will, the top 2 per cent can not close even a tenth of the federal government’s trillion dollar deficits before they start to drift off to more congenial climes. The President should have been using his political capital to corral recalcitrant Democrats on healthcare and social security spending as well, not stroking fantasies about the imminent demise of the Republicans.

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Now the fates have grimly conspired to give Obama another fitting target for his political capital: America’s demented love affair (and suspicion of government controls over) powerful and lethally efficient automatic weapons beyond the wildest imagination of the founding fathers.

He should seize the opportunity, as John Howard did after Martin Bryant massacred 35 innocent people at Port Arthur in 1996 when he forced the states to enact stronger controls of automatic and military assault style weapons.

“Ordinary citizens should not have weapons," Howard said at the time. “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia."

It was the making of Howard’s first term as prime minister. By acting while public opinion was aroused against guns, Howard disarmed his many critics on the left for later battles and neutralised the gun lobby on the right.

Self evidently, Obama faces greater obstacles than Howard did. The US gun lobby is huge, pervasive and ruthless. Much of Congress, and most of the Republican Party, is in its thrall, if not in its pay. He already has enough on his plate after an election year in which nothing of consequence got done.

But a President who aspires to greatness must also be an opportunist. And this is his chance. America is in shock. No words can do justice to the horror and anger all of us feel at the idea of a disturbed 20 year old driving 80 miles to kill his mother, seize her assault weapons and proceed to an elementary school to destroy the lives of small children, most of them girls aged six and seven, and their protectors.

If America is not ready for this conversation now, it never will be. It is an opportunity to change the national conversation about guns in America, as Howard did in Australia 16 years ago, that Obama may not get again.

Republicans are licking their wounds after failing to make any ground in national elections. As with taxes and immigration, many of them will be confused as to how to respond to new proposals from the President to restrict access to assault weapons, and more rigorously control access to all guns for all. Even the gun lobby, officially at least, is quieter for now.

Don’t take refuge in bromides such as “today is not the day" for a gun control debate. Start the conversation about how best to update and reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004, and how to accommodate it to the second amendment’s restrictions. Seize the day.